【Freelance Journalist Journey】Episode 1 — I made only $600 in the past 4 months
Today marks one of my first milestones completed as a freelance journalist.
My Facebook page now has 1000 followers.
It’s a small number, some people have more Facebook friends than that. But to me, it means a lot.
I left a full-time stable job in February. During the past 4 months, I thought I didn’t do much. But today, when I looked at the Facebook dashboard and all the other data, I realised — I did quite a lot.
Not only that I produced 7 videos and 31 articles, but I also watched 15hrs of online courses, learnt how different social media platforms operate, how to build strategy as a YouTuber, and how to edit videos, properly.
In addition to that, I made some good friends, and am now managing 3 Facebook groups with 1.4k members in total, running online and meet-up events every month.
I also found two mentors who helped me so so much when I struggled through the beginning. Even till now, I still actively ask my mentors for advice, and I am so grateful they continue helping me out.
With that, you may wonder, how much money I make now?
Well, I made $0 on social media. And only about $600 with immigration agency commission, freelance writing fee, and freelance photography projects.
What is even worse? My YouTube channel only has less than 200 subscribers, but the monetisation criteria are 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. With Facebook, the criteria are even higher, I need 10,000 followers.
And now you may ask, didn’t you know all that before you quit your job?
Yes, I did. I expected that I won’t be able to make any money for at least the first year.
But I had no regret with that decision, and to be honest, it’s the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.
Why?
Because in the last 10 years, my only goal was to immigrate to Australia. After I completed that, I felt so lost, cause I had no idea what to do next. It sounds stupid, but that is sadly the truth.
So in the past few months, I’ve done probably the longest thinking time in my life.
Every single day and night I question myself — what do I want to do? and what do I want to achieve in the next 10 years?
As of now, I still don’t have a proper answer to that, and I will continue working on that mission — finding MY meaning in life.
So that’s my journey as a freelance journalist so far, sharing with you.
There are still a lot of challenges ahead, but that’s okay, cause the most important thing is how we learn from failure, fall and quickly get up again.
And maybe, after setting my true goal, I will go back to 9–5 again ;)
In the next episode, I will be sharing what it means to be a freelance journalist in Chinese speaking world, and my day to day routine working on content creation. So, stay tuned!
